There was dirt and rocks as far as the eye could see. The nights were cold, and the days were hot. Van Gar spent his days picking up the rocks, putting them into buckets, and carrying them to one of two places. The first was the loading bay: apparently some planet was actually paying the Pride Leader for their rock. The second was the "building site," one of the few large flat places on this otherwise knobby planet. There, a crew of Chitzskies was mixing mud and laying up rock walls to build a large meeting hall which would double as a home for the "Pride Leader." When that structure was complete, they would work as a community to build single family living structures for the population. Currently the "population" was living in prefab, plastic coated, cardboard geodesic domes made entirely from recycled material which were, ironically, a product of Qwah-Co.
Each blue or red piece of every dome was stamped with the Qwah name in the alternating color. Her name glared mockingly down on him as he tried to sleep on the cardboard floor of one of the tiny domes which were meant to house six human-sized beings, and in which sixteen Chitzskies were living.
It was hard to believe that this was the most habitable part of the planet. No doubt this was why the planet had remained in such an "unspoiled" state. It rained very rarely—about twice a year—and the few wells that had been drilled recovered very slowly. Because of this, and the fact that they didn't want to overtax the recycling system, they were only allowed to have a real shower once a week. Showers were scheduled so that the same number showered every day. This meant the entire place always smelled like dirty Chitzsky, a smell which he found more repulsive every day.
So he'd lay there at the end of a hard day's work with his poly-fiber blanket on the cold floor with no pillow for his head. He'd breathe the putrefying stench of himself and his Chitzsky brothers and sisters, that burned the hair from his nostrils. He'd squeeze his eyes shut, trying desperately to go to sleep so that he could at least momentarily be released from the hell he had thrown himself into. And the whole time Drewcila would be mercilessly taunting him. She was so completely and totally egotistical that she'd insisted on anything the company created being stamped with her name. There he would lie, billions of miles from her, and all he could see when he looked up was Qwah, Qwah, Qwah! It should be a constant reminder of just why he was well rid of her. Instead, it only served to remind him of all that he had lost.
To make matters worse, he realized only a few days after landing that he found women of his own race to be entirely repulsive, smelly and hairy, and unpleasant to look at. One of the women, Shreta, seemed intent on bedding him. Naturally, she was the ugliest one of the bunch. She had a nice personality, but try as he might, he not only couldn't get aroused at the thought of sex with her, he'd thrown up the green slop they fed them twice a day just thinking about it. He was quite sure that the poor homely thing's underwear riding up into her crack was as close to sex as she had ever gotten.
A week after landing he had insisted they put him on the very next ship off this hole of a planet. They refused, so he decided not to work. They revoked his eating and bathing privileges. He figured he could out last them. Bathing was no big deal, because in truth he could put up with his own stench before he could put up with everyone else's. When you knew you stank, you could always assume it was you that you were smelling, which actually made the stench more bearable. Sort of the difference between smelling your own fart and someone else's. As for food, Shreta secretly sneaked it to him.
He was sitting on his ass one day, watching the others work, when he saw five "foremen" come together. They were talking and looking at him, and Van Gar was sure he'd finally won. That they were going to send him home. But when they started walking towards him . . . Well, he'd been in enough fights to know when someone was in an ass-kicking mood. Since he was in one himself, he stood up and got ready. He'd taken more than five people on before, and he'd always walked away victorious.
"Will you go to work now?" the one called Remo asked as they approached.
"No. I will not. We are all being used, we have all been duped by a con man. I want to be taken off this planet and brought to the nearest spaceport as soon as possible."
Apparently they weren't in a talking mood.
He put up a good fight, but they still beat him damn near to death. See, Van Gar had never faced even one other Chitzsky male in battle. They didn't crumple under his punches the way humans, Barions, and most other aliens did.
When they had beaten him bloody, they dragged him back into the field and put a bucket in his hand.
So now, all day, every day, he filled his bucket with rocks, dumped them into a wheel barrow, or carried it over to the building site just like a good little slave to the Pride Leader. All the while plotting ways off the planet and out of the mess he'd gotten himself into.
Shreta had once again worked her way over to pick up rock alongside him.
"How are you feeling, Van Gar?" she asked, even though it had been days since the beating. Truth was she asked him five or six times a day just because her conversational skills were that limited, and she wanted to talk to him.
"I'm fine. Healed. Stupid, but well."
She giggled, "You shouldn't have defied the foremen like that."
"That's not why I feel stupid," Van Gar growled back. She jumped a little at seeing his obvious anger, and he didn't feel in the least bit guilty."All my life I have felt that we were a highly superior race. I looked down at the other races I encountered, thinking them inferior in every way. But look at us, at all of us, and especially me. We are total morons. We gave up everything of worth to come here. For what? To haul rock and eat green glop 'til we eventually die on this godsforsaken planet of dust and rock."
Shreta looked at him and frowned. She was even uglier when she wasn't smiling."We came here to make a homeland. To have a better life."
"And does this," he stood up, held his arms out, and turned around, "look like a good homeland to you?" He let his arms fall to his side and looked into her eyes."Is sleeping on a cold, hard, cardboard floor in a room full of smelly Chitzskies, eating green slimy shit made out of gods only know what . . . Is this really better than the life you had before?"
She looked really confused now."We . . . we are working towards something. We are building a place for us, and our children and their children. It will take a lot of hard work, a long time . . ."
"How long? Look around you, Shreta. Rocks and dirt. A few struggling, scraggly shrubs. It will take generations to make this unfertile piece of crap yield crops or sustain herds. We surely won't live to see it, and as for children . . . would you condemn a child to live the life we live here? How horrible was your life before, that this seems better to you?"
A small crowd had now gathered around them, listening intently.
"I . . . I was a checker in a clothing store," Shreta said, obviously trying to remember the experience. Suddenly anger marked her features, making her yet uglier."I always had great clothes because I got them at discount. I was never too hot or too cold. I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted." She looked at Van Gar."We were tricked. That's what you were saying, isn't it?"
Mumbling started throughout the group as everyone recalled all that they'd left behind, all that they'd signed over to the "Pride Leader."
"You there, back to work," a foreman ordered approaching them.
Van Gar walked through the crowd and up to the foreman."Why?"
"Because there is work to do . . ."
"So?" Van Gar said with a shrug.
"So, the Pride Leader has set tasks for us to complete, and . . ."
"When did you stop even pretending not to be ordering us around?" Van Gar asked.
"Yeah," the others said as a group.
"If we're here because it's a better place for us, why do we have to answer to you? Why should we have to answer to anyone? Are we your brothers and sisters, or are we your slaves? And if we aren't your prisoners, why can't we leave if we like?"
"You again!" the foreman said, suddenly recognizing Van Gar."Brothers and sisters, this man is nothing but a lazy trouble maker. Such negativity will accomplish nothing. The Pride Leader has taught us . . ."
"His words have the ring of truth to them," an angry young Chitzsky said."Why should we have to listen to you? Why should we have to take orders from anyone? We were promised freedom from the abuse of the aliens we lived encased by, but what about the abuse that is shelled out by you in the name of the Pride Leader?"
"Better than that, if this is paradise, then why doesn't the Pride Leader come live here with us?" Van Gar added.
"He's . . . he's suffering out there, so that we can all be brought together here." But now even the foreman stammered.
"For what purpose? So that we can all starve together on this floating turd in space?" Van Gar asked. He'd run more than a few scams himself in the time he'd spent with Drewcila and he could now hear in this man's voice the faltering that always comes before the sell.
"The plantings we've made so far are starting to grow . . ."
"They are stunted and barely existing. Take in a deep breath. You know what that horrid stench is, my people? It's us. Why? Because there isn't enough water to bathe, much less water crops properly. The more of us there are, the more water we're going to need, and you can't squeeze water from a dry sponge. We can recycle the water just so many times, and then it isn't good for anything but plants, and there won't be enough of it to make them thrive. This guy who calls himself the Pride Leader has robbed us all, and he did it by promising us something that we all felt like we were missing. I know this because I also felt like I wanted a home planet. Someplace that belonged to Chitzskies, that we could call our own. But what were we really missing out on before? We had everything but a rock on which to hang claim and be responsible for."
"The Pride Leader used that small wish in each of us—the wish for a home planet—to take everything we had of value, and force us into a life of slavery so that he could get power and money. He is the greatest traitor to our race that has ever lived. And that's saying a lot considering that our ancestors managed to fight a war so brutal that they wound up blowing up our home planet."
A much larger group had formed by the time he ended his speech.
"What should we do?" the former foreman asked.
"We've already started," Van Gar said."We tell all the others and win them over. Then we get off this rock, go find this great imposter and take back what's ours."
Drew sucked on her cigar and paced the command deck, going through different options in her head. They were now in orbit around Barious, and every attempt made at communication with the surface had met with the same failure as earlier attempts. She had her best geeks working on it, but it was obvious that whatever the problem was, it wasn't one that they could solve—at least not from up here.
Their hard work had in fact done nothing but confirm what she'd already been sure of: someone had detonated a communications disruptor from one of the orbiting satellites.
The question was who? Without the answer to that question, she couldn't be sure just what sort of reception she'd be getting at the palace.
The Lockhedes were the likely suspects. After all, this whole war had been started because of Zarco's unwillingness to allow them to salvage with Barious. Cut off communications, and you basically shut down the biggest salvaging port in the galaxy, crippling the superior economy of the Barions, and bringing all commerce to a standstill until communications systems could be brought back on line. A few hours would cost them millions—a few days, trillions.
It definitely leveled the playing field.
However, her gut was telling her that it was probably Zarco and whatever idiots were pulling his strings at the moment who caused this disruption. The real problem was that Zarco was a moron, and it would be just like him to start a war that Drew didn't want, and then ruin her business by destroying communications. Yes, it would definitely be like him to shut the planet off from the rest of the galaxy, not to mention making planet-wide communication impossible, all just to piss her off.
Well, if all he'd really wanted to do was piss her off, he had succeeded beyond his very wildest dreams.
If she went in now, she'd be flying in by the seat of her pants. No ground support. No way of knowing whether the spaceport, or the palace for that matter, was over-run by the Lockhedes. She'd have to trust her own instruments to tell her that she wasn't running into things—like other ships. If she went down there and the country had been nuked, it was all just a great waste of time, and she'd need all her time to try and save her corporation.
"Orders?" Jurak asked carefully.
"I'm still thinking!" Drewcila stopped in mid stride and turned to face him."Can't you see I'm still thinking?"
"Sorry, my Queen." Jurak bowed submissively.
"All this sobriety, and thinking, and having to be responsible . . ." Drew stuck her cigar in her mouth and held it with her teeth as she ran her hands through her hair."I had hoped for so much more from life." She took a long drag from the cigar, and puffed the smoke slowly into Jurak's face until he gratified her by coughing. At which point she walked over, flopped into her command chair, and put her seatbelt on. She'd made her decision.
"Strap in, gang. We're going planetside," Drewcila ordered, and gave them exactly five seconds to comply before she started the descent towards the planet's surface. She puffed on her cigar, making clouds of smoke as she concentrated on the actual flying of the ship, while trying to watch all the monitors for any signs of enemy craft. There were three other people whose job it was to monitor such things, but she didn't actually trust any of them to do it.
This was a salvaging barge, but it was a royal salvaging barge, manned with an all-Barion crew. They were hopelessly loyal to her, but they hadn't traveled the space lanes as long as she had. They'd never had to deal with pirates or smugglers, and they didn't know all the tricks that an enemy could use to get around detection devices.
The ship had a pilot, and ordinarily she let him fly the ship, but right now, going in blind, perhaps into enemy territory . . . Well, she didn't trust him to do his job as well as she could, either.
This wasn't the Garbage Scow, but it was her ship, and as long as she was sober, she might as well fly it.
Of course, what would have put her most at ease was to have Van Gar at the controls. No one could fly under pressure like he could. She also missed having him around to bounce things off of. Jurak was the closest thing she had to a friend on this ship, and he was mostly an ankle-biting little lackey whose job it was to kiss her ass. He was too afraid of her to give her honest feedback most of the time, and he wasn't a true salvager. He, like the rest of the crew, had never been in the trenches with the garbage.
They didn't truly understand the ways of a salvager. They didn't think like one or act like one. Salvaging wasn't just a job, it was a way of life, an attitude, a certain way of seeing the universe and your place in it.
These people had yet to become one with the trash.
They didn't understand the true circle of life. You are born, you live, you make trash which must then be recycled, you die and you are recycled.
All things are eventually recycled. It was a truth that guided every true salvager.
And she, Drewcila Qwah, Queen of all Salvagers, had allowed herself to get too far away from her roots. Not the roots of her forgotten life as Queen of Barious, she couldn't give a shit less about that. No, what in that moment shamed her to the depth of her soul was that she had allowed herself to move too far away from her real roots. She was Drewcila Qwah, and before she was Queen, before she was owner of a major corporation, she was a Salvager. She should be captaining a real salvaging barge, not flying around in some imperial mock-up, giving orders over the computer to a bunch of greenies who wouldn't know a good score of trash if it jumped up and bit them on the ass. She should have a crew of salvaging scum from all corners of the galaxy under her command, and be traveling the galaxy in search of really interesting salvage.
As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, Van Gar was right. She had changed. Not because she was drinking, partying, or screwing around anymore than she had. She had always done that. But because she had forgotten to momentarily sober up and get in the trenches with the filth to find the good stuff. She had allowed herself to become soft and complacent.
She admitted something else, something that caused her a wrenching pain in her stomach. Money really wasn't everything! Being filthy rich wasn't worth anything if it kept you from doing the things you truly loved, if it cost you one of your only true friends.
Just then she saw an all too familiar blip on the bottom of one of her screens that immediately died out.
"Ah, fuck!"
"What is it, my Queen?" one of the techs who should have noticed the blip asked.
"We've picked up a tail. One of you morons try to get me a visual."
In front of her the picture of a star class Lockhede battle cruiser filled the screen.
"Try to hail the ship," Drew ordered.
"I'm sorry, my Queen . . ."
"They're powering up their canons!" Drewcila announced.
"How do you know that, my Queen?" Jurak asked.
"Because I'm not a moron. Our instruments show a change in the power fluctuation coming from their ship. Shields up! Full power!" she ordered as she began an evasive move to starboard.
"Shields at full power, my Quee . . ."
"Knock the my queen crap off. Call me Captain. I'm the Captain of this ship, damn it!" The first blast hit them, rocking the ship."Damage report."
"No damage to the hull."
"Drop shields, fire rear heat seeking missiles now!"
"My Q . . . Captain, I'm afraid we have no rear heat seeking missiles," Jurak reported, his voice taking on a panicked edge. It was hard to figure out whether his panic was due to their basically defenseless condition and the fact that they were under fire, or the fact that he had just told Drew something she didn't want to hear.
"Well, what do we have in our butt?" Drew demanded."And whatever it is, fucking fire it now!"
"We have a laser."
"I said fucking fire it!" A second blast hit them as they fired the laser canon in their tail.
"Damage report."
"Hull breach in sector seven."
"Seal off sector seven. God damn it! If Van Gar ever comes back I'm going to strangle him for leaving me with you idiots!" Drew could feel the ship pulling as she made yet another evasive maneuver."Fire the laser cannon again! God! Do I have to tell you morons everything? Use your fucking heads!"
"The laser was damaged in the last hit and will not fire," the weapons chief reported.
"Beautiful! Fucking beautiful!" Drew made yet another evasive move, and found that the ship was handling worse by the minute."What do we have in our nose?"
"Missiles, photon blasters, laser canons . . ."
"Good. Everyone hang on and prepare to fire everything on my command." She brought the ship about by turning nose over tail, bringing them into a collision course with the much larger ship."Fire!"
The security officer fired their entire arsenal, which hit the enemy ship with a very gratifying display of destruction. The enemy ship lost power, and its orbit began almost immediately to degrade, aided no doubt by the blast it had just received. Drew attempted to correct course just enough—she hoped—to skim the space just above the doomed cruiser. For an eternal moment of time, it seemed to the crewmen on the command deck that Drew was somehow forcing the ship to do the impossible through sheer force of will. Unfortunately, neither the application of force nor the exertion of her will could make the ship respond any faster than it was capable of responding.
The two ships were still too close as they closed, and there was an awful grating noise as their hulls met. Drew lost helm control, and her ship started spinning off course. The entire crew seemed to scream as one as Drew wrestled to regain control of the ship. It wasn't easy, and to make matters worse, Drew saw that dozens of bottles of beer and pounds of ice were bouncing around the flight deck, careening off instrument panels and crew.
"Who forgot to secure the ice chest? Shit! What a ship of fools." Helm control was returning slowly, and Drew was able to regain stability. However she wasn't directing the ship towards the surface of the planet, and yet that was where it was going.
"What is it with this fucking planet? Can't I just land? Do I always have to crash? Is a nice, reasonable landing at a spaceport too much to fucking ask for?"
She'd only actually crashed on the planet once before, but that would have made for shitty ranting, so she chose to indulge in exaggeration.
"We're all going to die!" Jurak screamed in panic. The rest of the crew quickly followed his example and started screaming and crying.
"Shee . . . it! What a bunch of fucking losers! Butch it up!" Drew ordered. Then she added in a mostly inaudible mumble, looking at the readouts on the monitor in front of her."We're all going to die." She was barely able to slow their descent, and steering them towards a spaceport would most likely be catastrophic. She needed someplace big and soft.
"We could . . . land in the Galdart Desert," Jurak suggested, struggling for control, and seeming to read her mind. No doubt he was remembering that was how she had survived her first crash onto the planet's surface.
"No!!!" Drew turned to glare at him."I'd sooner impale myself on a mountain top."
The further they got into the planet's atmosphere, the better the ship seemed to be handling. Unlike the doomed Lockhede battle cruiser, Drew's salvaging barge was actually built to land on planets."All right, we're closer now. Most of us would die, but a few of us would live." She mumbled as she checked her readouts and maps."Flying in blind with a damaged ship. Landing at a spaceport out of the question—could hit ships landing or taking off, or hit the station itself, as little control as I have over this tub." She was thinking out loud."Definitely don't want to land in Lockhede territory, and not going to land in the Galdart desert for damn sure. So, I look for a nice, long, stretch of water."
"Lake Witcha—it's close to the Capital. If they're able to monitor our descent at all, the king could then come and save us," Jurak suggested.
Drew postponed laughing at the prospect of having to be saved by Zarco, and made the necessary course corrections. The ship seemed to respond fairly well to everything but radical altitude adjustments. She started firing retro rockets—only three of the sixteen seemed to be functional, but still the ship seemed to slow some—and they were closer now.
Drew checked all the monitors and calculated the data in her head. She mumbled to herself."All right. We're closer to the planet's surface, and we still have some retro rockets. If I lost complete control now, but we happened to land in the lake, half of us would die, but the other half would live." The ship shook then as they hit some turbulence, and it took all her skill to keep control of the ship and keep it on course."All right, people, listen up! Code red! Implement Operation Silly Hat."
There was a communal gasp of horror as the entire crew suddenly realized the gravity of the situation. Then they unbuckled and ran around the ship finding their silly hats and donning them. Drewcila felt Jurak push a hat onto her head, and then watched as the crew dressed in their ridiculous hats and solemnly retook their positions, buckling in.
They were still closer to their destination now, and besides, they were all wearing silly hats. It was mathematically improbable that they would all die in a fiery crash while wearing stupid hats.
Drewcila switched all their power to the remaining retros and cringed as the ship shuddered, as it slowed still more. She wondered if the three remaining retros could survive firing at this intensity long enough for them to land. Short bursts wouldn't do much good at this point.
"Still, we're landing on water, and we're only a few hundred feet from the planet's surface, so some of us might die, but most of us would live."
Suddenly the ground and the lake were visible through the view screen. They were still going way too fast, and it didn't look nearly as close as she wished it did.
As she continued to fire the retros at full power, one of them burned out. With the reduced braking action, their speed wasn't falling off nearly fast enough.
The last two remaining retros sputtered, and then died.
Still, we're close, so close now, and we are landing on water, and . . .
"We are so screwed!"
Zarco watched in awe as the screen in front of him showed the pride of the Lockhede fleet crashing into the sands of the Galdart desert. The Artvail would soon be nothing more than rubbish in the sand, and what crew hadn't been atomized on reentry would soon be nothing more than Hurtella food
"Did we do that?" Zarco asked excitedly.
"Ah . . . Well, yes, of course we did," his new head advisor, Atario said."That was our plan all along. Knock out interstellar communications and then sneak up there and destroy their battle cruiser."
"Not to mention that it kept Drewcila off our backs for awhile."
"Ah, yes . . . the Queen." Atario laughed nervously."Sire . . . what are you going to do about the queen if she gets here?"
"Oh . . . she'll get here," Zarco assured him, "and when she does . . . she shall finally be a proper queen."
"What of her big friend?" Atario asked.
"My plan and my conviction have never faltered, Atario. When Taralin arrives, she will be brought to me. We shall reprogram her, and she will take her rightful place at my side. Together we shall utterly smite the Lockhedes and return the country to its former glory. The Chitzsky," Zarco's face twisted into an ugly mask of disgust, "is to be killed on sight, as are any who stand between us and obtaining our goal."
"And Sire . . . if Drewcila will not relent, if she will not be 'reprogrammed?' If she is in fact one of those standing in our way?"
"She will join us, she must. That is the plan," Zarco insisted.
A man ran into the king's office, out of breath. He bowed deeply then straightened."Sire, reports have come in that a large space ship has crashed into Lake Witcha."
"One of theirs or one of ours?" Atario asked impatiently.
"One of ours," the man answered excitedly.
"No doubt one of our ships damaged in the attack on the battle cruiser," Atario said quickly.
"Sire," the man continued, ignoring Atario, "a man on the ground who saw the ship fall . . . They are saying the ship is of imperial class. They believe it is the Queen's own ship."
"Dispatch troops immediately to rescue any survivors," Zarco ordered.
"Done, sire." The man ran out as fast as he had run in.
Zarco swung on Atario."Atario, you promised me that disrupting communications would not cause her to crash . . ."
"Sire, she is an expert pilot with an experienced crew. Landing blind should have been no trouble for her at all. Perhaps her ship was caught up in the fire fight when our forces locked horns with the Lockhede battle cruiser . . ."
"If you have endangered my wife to take out the Lockhedes' battle ship, I will see you drawn and quartered. How dare you engage the Lockhedes in a space fight when your queen was so close! It was irresponsible, and I'd better not find out deliberate. Don't think I don't know how the nobles feel about the queen, or how they would like to deal with her. We have made a pact, but I swear to you as your king, that if any harm comes to Taralin, either accidental or intentional, I shall see all involved die a slow and painful death, marked as traitors to the crown. Lest you forget it, she is the people's Queen, and amazingly popular among the military and the common man."
"I assure you, sire. No plot against the Queen is being hatched. We had no idea where she might be. We can't even be sure that it is the Queen's ship, sire," Atario said quickly, wishing now that he hadn't told the lie about them shooting down the Lockhede battle cruiser, and wondering whether it was better to stick to that lie and hope that Drewcila was alive, or tell the truth and suffer the consequences.
"For your sake, you had better pray that it's not."
"My Queen!" Jurak yelled out as he slung a piece of debris from her body."Are you all right?"
"Do I look all right, moron? I'm four shades of fucked up, but I'll live," Drewcila grumbled as she helped him shove another piece of ship out of her lap. She slapped his hands away and undid her own seat belt. "I hurt in places I didn't know I had."
She checked her console and found all her screens blank. She looked around at her crew, counting heads, and found that they were all shaken but not stirred. She laughed, clapped her hands together, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Wow! What a dick on a baby!"
"I believe that is the queen's way of showing her joy that we have all lived through our ordeal," Jurak interpreted for the crew.
"I am a fucking genius!" She laughed, took the silly hat—which turned out to be chartreuse with a red propeller on top—off her head, kissed it, and then stuffed it down deep into the pocket of her coveralls."Yet another Qwah theory tested and proven."
She stood up and almost fell over. The ship was swaying to and fro, which could mean only one thing. They were floating on the surface of the lake."All right, people, as much as I'm sure you'd all like to stand around and sing my praises, I have no idea how long this sucker can float or how deep this lake is, so I suggest we get our happy little asses out of this crate before we have to find out."
It wasn't as easy as it sounded. It took them a good thirty minutes to locate the escape hatch and figure out how to open it, and then they couldn't find the inflatable life raft. None of the crew had thought it was particularly important to go through the safety manual and run through emergency drills since Drewcila didn't seem worried about it. Apparently they had come to the conclusion that since she didn't seem at all worried about going through the manual and running them through the drills, that there must be little or no chance that this ship would meet with an accident. After all, Drewcila Qwah was their queen, and more important than that in this particular instance, she was a much more experienced space traveler than any of them were. They'd all assumed that if it had been important, she would have done it.
Drewcila, for her part, assumed the idiots knew how to run the ship they'd been crewed on, and it never dawned on her that she might ought to take the time to run through the safety manual or go through the drills. Van Gar had suggested it once, and she'd wound up screaming at him that he was an old lady, and that they had better things to do with their time. Then she'd easily talked him into an incredibly twisted act which included sugar and zero G.
The thought of it made her smile and momentarily forget the chaos all around her. That is until one of her panicked crewmen ran into her. She shoved him roughly, slamming him into a wall as she addressed her crew.
"All right you panty-waisted rejects, listen up . . ." she hadn't really thought past that, and they were now all silent staring at her expectantly, which was a lot of pressure since she really didn't have anything to follow that up with. She didn't really have anyone to blame but herself. But that didn't stop her trying."This is all your fault! What sort of a crew considers itself space worthy, and doesn't even take the time to read the emergency manual? I'm very busy being queen and running the corporation and all. I can't be expected to do such a piddly-assed thing as read manuals and mollycoddle you bunch of titty-sucking babies through a bunch of silly-assed drills . . ." Towards the back of the group Jurak was excitedly waving his hand in the air."What . . . what the hell is it, Jurak? Do you know where the raft is?"
He looked more than a little defeated."No . . . I was just wondering if we were supposed to address you as Queen or Captain now?"
Drewcila pulled at her hair and jumped up and down."Gods! I'm completely, astoundingly, surrounded by morons. Our ship has crashed and we're sinking in a fucking lake, and you're such idiots that you don't even know where the life raft is. Call me shithead if you like, I don't give a damn."
She stood perfectly still, then slowly walked over and leaned her head against the hull of the ship. She held her hand up towards them in a silencing gesture, and said in a suddenly calm voice, "Give me a few seconds."
They all nodded silently and waited as their illustrious leader mumbled inaudible whispers to herself. Finally she straightened, turned to look at them and took in a deep breath.
"Jurak?"
"Yes . . . Captain," he said deciding that of his three options this was the least likely to get him slapped.
"Do you know where the safety manual is?"
"Yes."
Drew glared at him and spat, "Then go get it!"
"Yes, of course," he said as sudden realization came to him. He ran off in the direction of the bridge and came back a few minutes later with the electronic manual, which he handed to Drew. Drew snatched it from his hand and started punching the buttons.
She sighed deeply.
"What is it Captain?" Jurak asked.
"We're standing on top of the damned thing. It's under these floor panels." She sighed as she looked from the escape hatch they had already opened to the floor beneath her feet. It made perfect and logical sense."Gee, no wonder we couldn't find it," she mumbled to herself.
It took her another ten minutes to get all the crew off of it so that they could actually remove the floor panels and pull the raft out. The raft was bulky and heavy, and that was before some idiot pulled the handle which started the raft inflating.
"Quick, quick push it out, before it inflates!" Drew yelled.
They only managed to get it half way out before it had finished inflating, successfully lodging it in the escape hatch opening. Drew looked around with total disdain at her crew."Which one of you morons did that?"
A little guy towards the back of the group sheepishly raised his hand.
"Why?"
"I . . . it was heavy, I thought perhaps it was a gravitational lifting device to make it lighter."
Drew pulled her blaster and leveled it at the crewman who had erred.
Jurak quickly grabbed her arm."Captain . . . I'm sure . . ."
"The planet will be a much better place if this stagnant member of the gene pool is never allowed to breed." She jerked easily out of his grasp, as the crewman fell to his knees and crawled over to her.
"My queen, I beg of you . . ."
"Ah, get up, you've ruined it for me now." Drewcila holstered her side arm. Then she turned to glare at Jurak."The moment is gone." She looked at the lodged raft and threw her hands up with a defeated air."All right, everybody push."
Fifteen minutes later the raft broke free and floated down to the surface of the lake, which turned out to be a good twenty feet below them. Drewcila grabbed the raft inflating guy and threw him out the hatch and down into the water.
"You grab the raft and bring it back over here. If it gets away and we have to swim, I'm going to blast your ass and leave you for fish bait. Understand?"
For answer the man swam after the raft, caught it by a rope on the side, and started pulling it back.
After a quick check in the safety manual she found the switch which activated the emergency ladder, and they climbed down the side of the ship into the waiting raft.
They started rowing towards shore, at which point Drewcila announced, "Let us never talk of this incident again." To which they all nodded their silent agreement.
They were halfway to shore when the king's army showed up to "save" them.
Drew slung her hands in the air and flopped back into the raft."Oh, now the bastards show up. Isn't that the way it always is with the cops?"
"I believe it's the military, Captain," Jurak said.
"Police, military, it's always the same thing. Where were they when idiot boy opened the raft in the escape hatch? That's my point. We don't need them now."
Jurak moved to sit beside her and whispered in her ear."You are a good leader."
She smiled, and patted him on the back."And you're a great lackey. I won't tell if you don't." She took a deep breath as she looked at the army waiting on the shore getting ready to board water crafts to come to their rescue.
"All right, people, listen up." She cleared her throat."The king didn't actually want me here, so I have no idea what sort of reception we can expect. You are all going on a long overdue shore leave. Jurak and I will be the only ones going to the palace."
"But my queen, our loyalty is to you, not the king," said wet raft inflating boy."If you are in danger, we will protect you." The others all mumbled their agreement.
"Gee, that's great, guys," Drew said, acting all choked up. Then she glared at them all in turn and hissed, "Listen up you sentimental dumb asses." She flicked raft boy on the head with her forefinger for good measure. She made her hands look like a scale."Look: big, ugly, well trained army with weapons in this hand. Small starship crew that has been mostly drunk and screwing for weeks—admittedly on my orders—possessed of three hand-held blasters between us, and riding in a rubber raft, in this hand. Big army, boat full of idiots; big army, boat full of idiots. Oh! Oh, oh! Look! I think the fucking scale is tipping, and the boat full of idiots is sinking." She took a deep breath and counted to ten. Life was so much easier when you were too drunk to make decisions.
"Once again. Here's the plan. I'm going to tell them you're going on shore leave. Jurak and I will go to the palace, and I will try to fuck Zarco into submission. In the meantime you will all go to Hepron Station and tell the morons there to put double security on my—as it turns out, not-so-secret—vault. As soon as communications are back up you will send for my old ship, the Garbage Scow. Wait there and hole up. I will call you if I need you. It's a simple plan. You idiots don't have to do anything. Nothing. You can do that, can't you?"
"Yes, my Queen," they all said.
They were about fifty feet from shore when the army boats came out to "save" them. The young captain who addressed her said, "My queen! Thank all the gods that you are alive."
"Good to see you, too. Have we screwed? Because you don't look familiar to me."
After three days locked in a cell, with the three of them sharing the same small bed and toilet, and with no word or sight of Zarco, Stasha had given up all hope.
She sat on the wooden bed and groaned."We are fucked, we are so fucked."
"Stasha!" Facto said in shock."You have to quit saying that. Do you even know what it means?"
"No."
To spare his lady wife he walked over and whispered the meaning in Stasha's ear.
"All right, but now I really don't get why it's a bad thing to say," Stasha said with confusion.
Facto looked thoughtful, then confused."Well, I suppose it has something to do with the way in which you do it." He shrugged."Or say it."
"We mustn't give up hope, Stasha," Margot said, stopping her pacing to sit beside Stasha on the hard bed.
"Why? Why mustn't we? We have been caged up like animals. Zarco swore that he loved me, and now I have been locked up so that he can pursue my sister."
"Well, she is his wife," Margot reminded her gently.
"Only in name. Drewcila Qwah isn't Taralin. She'd be the first one to tell you that. I can't believe you're defending Zarco. Look what he's done to us . . . and for what crime?"
"I wasn't defending him. Just, well . . . he never did really belong to you. You have to look at this realistically . . ."
"I am. That's why I said we're so fucked!"
"Calm down, ladies," Facto said, although right then he didn't really feel like being the voice of reason. In fact, he had to agree with Stasha."Let us not lose sight of the real horror. Zarco has started a war. A war in which all the people of our country will suffer and many will die." He turned to face Stasha and his wife, lowering his voice."Your sister, dear lady, is walking into a trap. A trap from which, as you so rightly stated, even she may not be able to escape."
"Meaning that the whole thing is hopeless, and we are going to rot in this cell until they decide to execute us," Margot said, and started to cry. Facto moved to hold and console her.
"No, no! That's not what I was saying at all."
"Funny, that's more or less what it sounded like you were saying to me," Stasha mumbled.
"My point, though I apparently fumbled rather badly along the way, was that we can't give in to these feelings of self pity. We have many allies among the people. The house staff has not changed, and many of them are loyal to the queen . . ."
"Do you hear yourself, Facto? We are to be rescued by the cook and the cleaning lady!" Stasha said in disbelief.
"I was merely suggesting that one or more of them might come to our aid. They might find a way to free us. If we got out, if we could only make it to the bar . . ."
Stasha laughed."The bar! Facto, I fear you've been working for my sister too long."
"Your sister had a state of the art security system installed on the bar. Force fields on the doors, anti-discharge weapons, the whole works."
"What on Barious for?" Stasha asked.
Facto looked confused."I don't really know . . . It's not important now. We must stay strong and convicted. The time may come when we can help. We must stay alert, ready to strike. If our moment comes, we will have but a second to act. The fate of the whole kingdom may very well rest on our shoulders, we must be prepared to move without a moment's hesitation."
"My husband is right, Stasha," Margot said drying her eyes.
"Maybe, and maybe it's way past time to do anything. Perhaps the fate of the whole kingdom has already been written in stone, and we are now impotent to do anything except protest." That said, Stasha got up, walked to the cell door and started yelling.
"Zarco! Zarco, you let us out this minute! Do you hear me? This is insane. It's all insane! Please!" She kept her tirade up till her voice gave out, but no one ever appeared. Not Zarco, not even a guard. Exhausted, she slid down the bars to the floor and started to sob again.
One of the guards, a young man in his early twenties, came around the corner and knelt beside her."Hey, royal chick."
She looked up at him, a little startled.
"Listen . . . there are still some people here loyal to Drewcila. We know what they have planned for her, and we have our own plans, see? So just cool your heels for awhile, and everything will be fine." He looked around quickly then to make sure he hadn't been noticed."For the record, I think the King's a pud. I mean, Drew's all right, but you are one fine babe."
One of the other guard's footsteps could be heard coming their way, so he rose quickly and walked away, leaving a little wake of hope behind him.